"I'm excited to work with David on this," Zuckerberg wrote in a Facebook post announcing the hire. "He has great experience building movements as part of companies like Uber and as campaign manager for Barack Obama's presidential campaign."

Zuckerberg pledged in late 2015 to give away 99% of his Facebook(FB) shares, then valued at about $45 billion, to the philanthropic organization. The focus was said to be on personalized learning, curing diseases, connecting people and community building.

Since then, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative has pledged to invest $3 billion over the next decade to build tools with the lofty goal of curing all diseases. It has also invested smaller sums in Byju, an education startup based in India, and Andela, a startup that trains software developers in Africa.

Plouffe, an informal adviser for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, made headlines after the election for admitting he'd been wrong about Donald Trump's ability to win.

"Never been as wrong on anything on my life," Plouffe tweeted after results came in on election night. "I'm sorry everyone," he wrote in another tweet.